Riverfront Pizzeria’s Good Times, Good Pizza

Greendale
residents have long been familiar with the name Ricardo’sand the
specialty thin-crust pizza it’s been serving for 40 years. In 2006, a
second location opened, this time on a prime waterfront location in
Milwaukee’s Third Ward. The newer location is called Riverfront
Pizzeria, and the place still looks like it just opened.

Inside
you’ll find a bar along with booths and tables placed near the many
windows. Outside are metal tables and chairs along the RiverWalk. The
river view provides an interesting contrast, combining an old, rusty
railroad bridge with luxury condominiums and the many impressive boats
docked along the shoreline. The interior looks like a renovated
warehouse, with marbleized concrete floors and a high ceiling boasting
exposed wood and beams.

Pizza is clearly the focus, but the menu also offers appetizers, salads, pastas,
sandwiches and a limited number of entrees. The appetizers include the
predictable Italian-American lot: calamari, bruschetta, eggplant
strips, mozzarella sticks, etc. A few salads and entrees break from the
mold, but the kitchen gets more creative with the pizzas.

The
basic cheese pizza comes in four sizes ($6.75-$16.50). The thin, crisp
crust is one of the best in the area, and the tomato sauce is suitably
spiced. You can custom-design your pizza, selecting from more
than 25 toppings that range from artichokes to pepperoni, from
pineapple to Canadian bacon. The house offers creations of its own as
well, again available in four sizes ($9.25-$26).

The
Harborfront is the restaurant’s version of a pizza margherita; you’ll
also see novelties with names like Thai chicken, BLT, Hawaiian and
cheeseburger. The special “pizza of the week” goes a step further. A
recent option was called a Rueben, with the sandwich ingredients on a
rye crust. Another was chicken curry, which substituted a mild red
curry paste for the tomato paste and combined pieces of chicken breast
with bell peppers, sweet onions and a blend of mozzarella with
provoloneexotic in name, but full of summery garden flavors.

The
entrees include a beef option and three seafood selections. The beef
entree is Sicilian steak ($17.95), a very tender cut with a light
bread-crumb coating. It is served with tomato sauce and topped with
sliced green peppers, onions and mushrooms. A side of pasta with garlic
butter and chopped fresh parsley accompanies the dish. Though the steak
is tender, the meat curiously lacks flavor. Perhaps some of that
garlic, so prevalent on the pasta, should be added here.

The menu
features more than a dozen choices for pasta. Sausage Diablo ($14.95)
is orecchiette pasta in a marinara sauce spiced up with a dash of hot
red pepper flakes and a bit of lemon juice. The sausage link comes in
slices, and the marinara sauce in this meal has more happening than the
sauce served with the steak. This is a pleasing dish and, despite the
name, relatively mild.

The entrees and pastas are strictly a la carte,
but the menu offers a garden salad ($4). It is a blend of iceberg and
leaf lettuce complemented by Roma tomato and red onion. Dressing (the
balsamic is merely a little above average) is served on the side. The
salad is of good size, though some browning leaves escaped the
attention of the kitchen.

Sandwiches include a variety of
burgers and paninis, and Fridays feature a fish fry ($9.50-$12.95).

Geared toward a casual clientele and very popular with groups,
Riverfront Pizzeria is a fun place to be. The servers try hard and the
kitchen is prepared for busy times. The wine list ($6.50-$9.50 by the
glass, $25-$45 for bottles) has several Italian choices and the prices
seem right for a place like this. The surprise at the bar is an
extensive vodka selection, on par with a specialized martini bar. But
the draw here really is the pizza, which you’ll see at nearly every
tableand with good reason.

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